in 1973 the US debt was $466 billion ...it was $5.727 trillion when Bush 2 took office... his administration raised it $4 trillion to over $9 trillion...to approximately 70 percent of the gross domestic product.

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At this rate the hole will get too deep to dig themselves out of..if history has proven anything, it's that Empires are not conquered from without, they destroy themselves from within.

Maybe we should pull together and purchase the US...A hostile take over by buying out all of its debt

Theoretically...someone could buy up the debt and for all intents and purposes own the US...theoretically that is. Like if you owe a bookie $10,000 and another bookie buys the debt then you now owe the debt holder...and also like a bank mortgage/debt if you default on payments they take your house...of course that would never happen...but...

Imagine the sheer economic and political leverage China would have if they bought up all the US debt.

If the US gets too much more in debt you will see it's currency fall to all-time lows...in ten years that debt could easily triple...and the US dollar could fall under $0.50...the economy could collapse even further than it has...and China would emerge as the new economic superpower.

Not a very pretty scenario for any of us...but a very real possibility.

Panama Red wrote:Start learning Mandarin, as of right now, the Chinese have underwritten so much of that debt, that if they called them in, the US would have to file for protection....

And the Arabs. Islamic banks don't allow the trading slight of hand that has dug this hole.But that assumes that the money is real and finite. The UK has just fired up the printing presses at the Royal mint.Banks are going to handout a free wheelbarrow with every account opened.

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
- Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

True...but if you flood the market with paper to the point it becomes worthless what you end up with is the equivalent of a peso.Seeing as the US debt already accounts for 70% of it's GNP ( not including the bailout funds which are at this point mostly in the form of IOU ..that's just on their $11 trillion debt ) ...if it ever gets to the point where it consumes all the GNP...what you end up with is a Country on the verge of total economic collapse.

It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

China is calling for a new global currency to replace the dominant U.S. dollar, showing a growing assertiveness on revamping the world economy ahead of next week's London summit on the financial crisis.

China has long been uneasy about relying on the dollar for the bulk of its trade and to store foreign reserves. Premier Wen Jiabao publicly appealed to Washington this month to avoid any response to the crisis that might weaken the dollar and the value of Beijing's estimated $1 trillion in Treasuries and other U.S. government debt.

For decades, the dollar has been the world's most widely used currency. Many governments hold a large portion of their reserves in dollars. Crude oil and many commodities are priced in dollars. Business deals around the world are done in dollars.

But the financial crisis has highlighted how America's economic problems -- and by extension the dollar -- can wreak havoc on nations around the world. China is in a bind. To keep the value of its currency steady -- some say undervalued -- the Chinese government has to recycle its huge trade surpluses, and the biggest, most liquid option for investing them is U.S. government debt.

Beijing has been unusually bold in recent months in expressing concern about Washington's financial management and pushing for global economic changes. That reflects both its relative financial health and growing concern that increased globalization means missteps abroad could harm its own economy.

Zhou's comments are also part of China's longstanding push to reform the IMF, World Bank and global financial system to give greater voice to China and other developing economies -- another theme that will be heard from China, Brazil, Russia and India at the summit of Group of 20 major economies next week.

The ironic thing is that the US is going into near incomprehensible debt by printing fake money to pay off debt accrued by printing fake money.

Over three years ago when I graduated high school and began to truely educate myself in economics and politics, I saw this coming. Unfortunately it has only been within the last 6 months that I've been in a position to where I can prepare for the coming collapse, but I've improved on that. I've got a enough commodities to survive for at least a 2 year depression. Likely it will be 10-15 years once it strikes, but I've got another 2 years before it reaches critical mass. By that time I should be secured well enough.

I'm contemplating taking out a massive loan for medical school and timing it so that the weimar style inflation will hit just after I sign, which will essentially allow me to pay for a full medical education for beans.

The thing about China is, and it goes both ways, sure they might be considering going to a universal monetary system and getting off the leaning of the waning US Dollar..

BUT

One thing the US could do, to help improve jobs over here which would be one method of improving the economy by actually having jobs instead of doing this massive bailout which consists of fake money, is this: every item that you see in Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, etc...that says "Made in China", get all those factories over here in the US fired back up and put people that've been out of work for a long time now and will WORK their ASSES off for that paycheck. People might say "Oh, American-made stuff is crap, blah, blah"...I don't buy that. Why? You buy a clock radio in a store that's 15 bucks and it's that cheap because it's made in china by the millions per month and sent all over the place, etc...it breaks in 5 months and what do you do? You don't care, you just go out and buy another one that's $15. There's no national pride like there used to be...hell, we have a president who won't even put his hand over his heart when the national anthem is being sung and probably wouldn't sing along if it were being choir-sung to boot. And we're supposed to go by this? I would buy everything in my house that was Made in the USA, hands down....if something breaks, ok, here comes another item Made in the USA. Any place in Europe, Canada, England, Germany, Russia, etc...those are on my accepted 'buy' lists.

In the world of protection, one thing is for sure: security = 1 / convenience.

Problem with that is it's protectionism and that is a no win situation, what needs to be done is to re-evaluate the use of unionized labour, if you want to point fingers, this is where the problems started, I often hear Americans defending their rights to make money and that's all well and good, but if I'm say an owner of a running shoe company and the union is busting my balls to the max, well I am going to start looking for ways to get out from under that, and a few of them is to reduce full time positions and replace with temp or part time, ergo no more benefits, or better yet, take up Cahvez offer to relocate my company to Venezuela and pay out a few peso's a Month to keep the sharks off of my back and pay the workers peanuts.

Your Governments allowed corporations (so did ours) to go offshore or over seas, funnily enough some of those products that say are made in Korea, may have been made by an American owned company....

What is happening now is an attempt by the corporations to break apart the unions, it's already started by GM re-writing the employees contracts in order to save jobs and get Tax payers money, yet AIG's contracts couldn't be broken so that the bonus's would not be paid otherwise they would have sued....funny eh

The significance is the amount of unConstitutional totalitarianist power that Obama, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and Congress are throwing around.

If GM had broken contract and rewritten the negotiated terms, the Union could have sued no problem. They would have hastened GM's inevitable demise, but that's would have been their choice. Instead the Federal Government has:

Used public funds for private endevorsSent the currency on a death spinExpanded ineffective regulatory policy that chases away businessDecreased incentives through tax policySeized private propertyFailed to enforced contractsBreached contractsImposed UnConstitutional expost-facto tax law that did not originate in the House to deliberately rob.

etc. etc. I could go on and on.

The Bush administration was a disaster. The Obama administration is turning out to be a nightmare.